


Tomorrow's Answer

by ecotone



Category: Destiny (Video Game)
Genre: (an attempt to clear out the WIP folder), Canon-Typical Violence, Ficlets, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-29
Updated: 2018-07-23
Packaged: 2019-01-25 21:50:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 3,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12541948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ecotone/pseuds/ecotone
Summary: A whole string of strange, strange worlds.A collection of Destiny 2 (and some Destiny, probably) ficlets.





	1. Festival, Revisited (Eris)

Eris is orbiting Luna when the first day of the Festival arrives. 

She almost lets it pass her by completely- it is late at night when her terminal finally blinks her a message, a small reminder at the corner of her screen. _Festival of the Lost begins,_ the notice reads for a few seconds, before it dissolves completely into the burnt-out pixels that line the edge of the screen. Idly, Eris realizes she’s been using the same private terminal since she was first Risen, all those centuries ago. 

But the day does not escaped unnoticed, and Eris does not know whether she wanted it to or not. She sends a message to Ikora, nothing more than her week’s field notes and a question. Ikora answers within ten minutes, still using the same encryption Eris had abandoned long ago: no Festival. If there was we might all be swallowed by grief, and for now we must all focus on rebuilding. 

It comes as more of a surprise than it should, Eris thinks. She has been consumed by grief since she saw Eriana burn bright and burn out, since she killed her first Thrall in the tunnels, since she carved out an Acolyte’s eyes to replace her own. The Tower has the same choice that was ripped from her hands on the same Moon she is currently hanging just a few thousand feet over. It has chosen to leave that grief behind, at least for now, at least until it can return to pick it up and carry it safely home. 

Once, Eris knows she could not help. Even in the months after the King died, she was still too full of pain to do anything but slink back into the shadows that had kept her safe and hidden, glare into shoddy paper masks until they retreated into the Vanguard hall with glimmer strung around their necks like jewels. The Festival was nothing but a mockery of pain by those who had not lost what she had, had not gone through the same suffering the oldest Titans and Warlocks and Hunters had- 

Except now all of them _had_. She had asked for a list of Hidden, in the days after the attack, as soon as her comm lines had stopped spitting static and she could send messages longer than a few strangled words. Ikora had been too busy with her duties and loss but Asher hadn’t, and so he sent her what she’d asked for, every dead and missing Hidden in the system. 

The losses hadn’t cut through her like the Mare Imbrium list had. She did not know most of the names lost in Towerfall, not beyond cautious glimpses and traded shards and runes and wormspore. But for every Guardian lost was another too similar to her, Lightless and alone and the last one standing. 

But then the Light came back, and she was back to her high and lonely status. The dead remained dead, though, and the grief stayed with the living. Fresh grief, too, not decades-old pain buried underneath miles of rock, lost in dark tunnels full of worms. 

So Eris does what she can, in her small ship floating alone in cold orbit. She finds the box of lights Amanda had hidden in the cupboard when she thought Eris wasn’t paying attention, strings them up along the dented metal roof. On the back of the pilot’s chair she hangs a few engrams, all glowing purple-yellow-green. She digs around underneath her small bed until she finds her trunk and lifts out what she has left: a Titan helmet, an engraved throwing knife, a cracked Bond that glows orange if she holds it up to the sunlight. Eris lays her treasures out and she is alone here but it is not the same loneliness she has always felt. Her grief has not left her but in the Light it is not so heavy, maybe.


	2. Mare Imbrium (Eriana-3)

How Eriana-3 survives the Great Disaster, the day the Moon turns to a graveyard and the sky goes Dark with screams:

When she arrives on the battlefield, Sparrow smoking, Hive-song still tearing at her mind, she finds the Hive, the Swarm Princes, the Hive Prince himself. There are dozens of dead Guardians strewn around His feet but she sees one, Wei, Wei- 

The Wizard's death-screech is still too loud in her ears, laughing and singing and screaming in equal measure. Eris leaves her own Sparrow behind and frees her knives from her sleeves, Arc Light flashing and rendering packs of hungry Acolytes into sparks. There are hundreds of Hive surrounding them all and Eriana does not take her eyes off of Crota, even when a Knight charges and swings and buries its blade in her back. Behind her someone yells, and the Knight falls into ash under a hail of bullets, but she- 

Eriana-3 dies her ninety-seventh death looking Crota in the face. She dies but she dies furious, and the Veil cannot hold Praxic wrath down for long. 

She resurrects like a torch relit and brings all her rage with her. She _burns,_ hot and bright enough to turn Hive to ash where they touch her, where the Thrall bite and claw at her armor, where the Knights roar and tear swords of bone through her robes. The ground around her feet is a sea of Light, a million suns blazing with white-hot fury. 

What a palm full of fire cannot kill she leaves to her gun, its casing glowing red under her fingers, its paint bubbling. When her Radiance finally gives out the metal threatens to set her gloves on fire, and so she drops it, finds another, kills until she is dragged off of the battlefield and into one of the dropships, evacuation order blaring over the tinny speakers. When the doors close behind her someone shoots her in the head to keep her from lighting the whole ship aflame. In the morning, her Ghost wakes her, and the grief is enough to leave scorch-marks on her bedsheets. 

She does not carry the Fire Victorious with her, to Mare Imbrium or the Hellmouth- there is no room for it on the Moon, amongst so much Darkness, so much death. But maybe her vengeance will burn hot enough to turn Luna to ash, whether in victory or pyrrhic defeat.


	3. Io (Eris & Asher)

Three and a half months after Ghaul dies, Eris comes to Io. She finds a quiet spot in the Rupture, near the pool of sensors and radiolaria, where the jagged rocks offer a place to sit and watch. Asher's jumpship arrives at five-thirty in the morning, dropping him in a haze of staticky transmat, and the first Guardians arrive soon after. 

“I see why you’re still a part of the Hidden,” Asher says at eight, not looking up at where she’s sitting with one leg hanging over the rock shelf. “Despite- well.” His fingers twitch, and he pointedly jabs at his keyboard with his other hand. 

Eris glances down at him, feels a stab of the same pity she has always received, always hated. She wills it away, because the two of them are similar enough that she knows he resents it just as much. 

“And you still linger near the Dark,” she replies, as if Io isn’t as close to safety as either of them are willing to get. Here, she can feel the Traveler’s still-new Light pressing up against her ribs, the ground humming with the same strange energy. “Researching or obsessing over the Vex. The Light.” 

Asher groans, turns away from his terminal to glare at her. “I do not _obsess._ ” 

Eris frowns at him, though she welcomes the detour into petty argument. She has been virtually alone again for months, and she does not wish to spend her first real conversation since her departure raking through Dark-stained pasts. “In the past half-cycle, you have sent me four hundred messages. Ikora says you’ve requested Vanguard oversight for experimentation six times this week.” 

“Oh,” Asher says, “you’re no better. You won’t stop asking me to cross-reference runes that don’t exist! Six sets yesterday, and none of them with any meaning from here to the World’s Grave.” He swings an arm out in exasperation, drags the other up over his forehead. “Warlocks research less. Even the mad ones!” 

“The Vanguard has asked for the information,” Eris replies, even though she means Ikora, and Asher knows it. Zavala will never really trust her now, not after she vanished, and she will not ask him to. “There is something stirring in the Overworld. We cannot afford another Taken War, especially now.”

“Unfortunately,” Asher sighs. “Any messages?” 

“None since I left.” She crosses her arms, looks at the great bones jutting up from the green-grey stone of the ground. The Orb is hidden away in the corner of her ship, locked behind a cabinet. Something has been watching her through it, lately, three needle-sharp eyes gazing at her own. Whatever messages she's received from the Overworld have been intercepted, and she is not about to let the Hive know that she is aware of them. “The new Queen is laying her plans, planning to take her brother's mantle. Beyond that I have found nothing.” 

Asher sighs again, more contemplative this time. “We’ll know soon enough,” he says, and he’s right, even if Eris and Ikora and the whole Tower wish he wasn’t. They will all know eventually, and the Hive and their Queen will rain devastation, and Eris will return to the City speaking in Thrall-tongue, and the new Light will recoil and the old will take some comfort, maybe, in knowing the death and un-death of their old world did not change everything, that there are still real gods to kill. 

Until then, there is work for her to do, and no one else to do it. Eris swings her other foot over the edge of the shelf, carefully drops from the rock wall. This hunt will always need a hunter, and the Light of this place- _Light,_ after so long above the Moon- almost makes her feel like a Hunter, again, even though the cold of the Void in her head has long since been taken over by the cold of Hive-tunnels and weary survival. If she ignores herself hard enough, this place looks like the northernmost edges of Venus, where the jungle gives way to rock-flats, where she once shared a tent with Sai for four weeks while they were searching for Draksis. “Ikora will be asking for a transmission soon,” she says, and tilts her head in farewell. 

Asher looks at her hard for a few long seconds, the way that intimidates the newest-Risen and makes the rest of them think he’s fully mad. “Goodbye, Eris Morn,” he says, instead of "Eris," instead of "Hunter," like he knows the strange pull of the Light, the one that makes this place feel like it belongs two hundred years in the past, the same way he knows the pull of the Lightlessness they both share, the pull not towards Darkness but towards simple mortality. Maybe he does. 

“Goodbye, Asher Mir,” she replies, instead of “Gensym Scribe,” and leaves to go find the Blights. She will return tomorrow, and she will ask him about this strange place, and they will find some other topic to argue about, and maybe both of their burdens will lighten.


	4. Mercurian Days (Maya/Chioma)

“Do you remember when we were here?” Chioma asks. “The real Mercury, I mean.” 

Maya nods, shifts so that she can see both Chioma and the pink treetops, their odd branches sprawling out like mazes with no exits. “Our tenth anniversary,” she replies, “Caloris Planitia. We went and saw the Vex ruins, and then your ears got sunburned because you wouldn’t wear your hat.” 

Chioma laughs, moves her foot to poke at where Maya’s back meets the yellow grass. “We should make an adventure out of our next anniversary,” she says, “and go somewhere strange,” even though everything they’ve ever done has been an adventure, here in the infinity of Vex data and before that, even, in brightly-lit gymnasiums and on kitchen countertops. 

In the distance she sees something gold-Light flash, and she waves high and slow. Maya doesn’t turn to look but raises a hand regardless, lets it drop back to her stomach after a few seconds. The flickering body elongates, it looks like- an arm raising, distorted by light and distance- then blinks out. Chioma smiles. 

“Like where?” Maya asks, after a minute of watching Chioma watch the clouds. 

“The beach, maybe,” Chioma replies. “That one in Turkey that we never got to spend any time on because of the rain. Or we could dig through the archives again. Find a nice exoplanet to explore.”

“Mm.” Maya rolls onto her stomach, props her head up on a hand. “We could ask the lightning bugs if they’ve been to any interesting places recently.” 

“All of them like battlefields the best. And the Vault- but we’ve already been through this set of Vault variations. It doesn’t turn over for another two days.” 

“You did ask number two hundred and thirty-seven to find you a nice poppy field for your scans. We could go there, set something up.” 

Chioma nods, looks up at the clouds again. They don’t move, in the Forest; the Vex don’t look up enough to bother simulating the gentle drift. “That was only three days ago. With how many there’ve been lately, I think they’re busier than we are.” 

Maya smiles, closes her eyes. “They’re always busy. I asked twenty-one what they've been doing and he said that they’re still working on temporal clean-up. He was going to wrangle future-Fallen.” 

“Oh, we should go help with that.” 

“You can. I’d rather not wrestle with something that has more arms than I do.” 

“You’d just rather not wrestle.” Chioma laughs, watches a few streaks of gold move around a half-mile away. She is not the only copy here, she thinks. It’s not something she really thinks about, except with a scientist’s curiosity- she is Vex-made, maybe, and yet as real as her other two hundred and twenty-six selves. But the idea of another set of people wandering, exploring, makes this place feel almost homely. 

Maya laughs, like she knows what Chioma’s thinking. Maybe she does, at this point in their lives. She grins as one of the Reflections spots them, waves him over. A good home and several hundred good neighbors, she thinks. Now all she needs is Shim and Duane-McNiadh arriving with their exasperation and data sets. 

The Reflection points her towards a field, and they set up something quiet, spread a blue-green blanket out to sit on. Two more join their quiet picnic, taking a break from their endless scurrying from past to future to present. Maya smiles when she sees them, eyes bright against the gentle yellow of the grass. Even amongst an infinite set of days, here or in the Vault or during those spent still mortal, this one seems like one of the best.


	5. Vault of Glass (Kabr)

“Hey,” Pahanin says, “where are we?” 

Kabr turns and Pahanin isn't there, so he turns again. He’s there this time shimmering where the light of the confluxes refracts against wet stone. When they were winding down the pathways leading to the Templar’s chamber Pahanin had slid down the steep inclines, laughing, asking what rain had come through the center of the earth to make them so slick. As the Vault door had shut for the first time they’d watched the yellow-orange light of Venus collide with the purple of the Praetorians’ still-sparking torch hammers. 

First time, he thinks. First time first time first time, wait,   
was there a second time?—

Kabr steps back urgently, afraid now, and Pahanin shifts, shimmering, armor dissolving into the particles of white pulsating gently from the conflux behind them-him-it. In his place is a Harpy, trilling softly, though it teleports away before Kabr can put a bullet through its casing. Its eye glows red above him. 

He reaches for his gun again but what would bullets do to ghosts?  
Bullets did nothing to the Templar’s shields or the Templar or the Vex spiraling away before he could reach— 

(but not Ghosts, Ghosts could be hit, shattered, rendered dead and Lightless and afraid, wait, is that him or his Ghost or maybe both— ) 

He turns again and before him is a pile of brass, tall enough that he can barely see over it even when his eyes jump quick and nervous to its summit, wide enough that he cannot see its edges. The Harpy trills again somewhere behind him and his hand twitches, knuckles sparking even though his Light’s too weak to light a torch, now. 

This feels like cheating. For the past day—  
No not day  
Lifetime? Eternity?—

he has been fighting wave after wave of machines and feasting upon the ruins. His armor had succumbed to rifle-flash and cannon-burn fourteen days(? weeks months) ago, and in its place was brassy metal and torn padding. His vision is black around the edges, blind spots or blinders. 

Kabr looks at the wall and, because he is the tip of the spear, breaks. 

(turns away turns again and—   
garden. forest first then desert then sun and then again—) 

Kabr never knew Pujari well but when he hears the trill-laugh in the distance he knows the Vex did. 

(focus. garden—   
ocean, now? lake, maybe. it is white and frothy where the waves crash up against his legs—   
he is not wearing his armor  
his legs are brassy except where the water touches, where they bronze and rust and flake apart  
it is not water   
he is not him— ) 

When he kneels the movement is too smooth, comes too naturally. The unfitting edges of his boots should be pushing up into the soft spots behind his knees, his feet should ache, he— 

The realization comes and he sits silently for a month day second century. 

And then he speaks— 

(again and again and again,   
saying I/we/you was/were/are wrong  
I/we am/are Kabr/us  
we can speak we can speak we  
are him I  
am him— ) 

and drinks— 

(salt— )

and is not Kabr again.


	6. Outpost (TTK Petra)

“If you don’t mind my asking,” one of the new Guardians starts, gesturing nervously at their own helmet, “what happened to your eye?” 

Behind Petra, the Reef Guards shift. She can hear Lissa stifle her usual laugh; as always, the just-Risen are shameless in their curiosity. Vance has suffered the same questions in his own quiet corner of the Outpost, she knows. Guardians erupt from the grave shining and uninhibited by any physical limitations, and most of them have left their manners behind with the grave-dirt. 

Still, it’s entertainment. Petra flips her knife, catches it with a flourish, watches the Guardian stand uncomfortably still. It’s hard to tell where they’re looking, given the helmet, but she looks them in the face anyway. A flash of movement catches her eye— a few yards back, a Hunter is trying not to gawk at the exchange. 

“I lost it protecting the Reef,” she replies, “as the Queen’s Guard does.” It’s a simple truth, lacking in what she knows Guardians are always hungry for: a good story, heroics, some amount of bloodshed. 

The Queen’s Guard tell the Guardians stories to pass the time, she knows. She’s heard the whispers— _Venj stopped the Siege of Pallas and lost her eye to one of Pirsis’ blades; Venj offered her sight to the Queen as thanks for calling her back; Venj killed Veliniks with the same blade that almost killed her._ They’re all stories worthy of the Maraid, tales like the ones that she remembers her sisters telling her as a child. None of them mention Amethyst. 

Some of the rumors call her a hero; something a Guardian started, probably, in an attempt to find some common ground. But true-born Awoken know that the Reef Wars were not suited for heroics, and she will not remember her time in them with anything other than quiet determination. She won’t pretend to be a savior while her sisters lie buried in Vesta’s shining mausoleums. It’s something these Lights will learn, one way or another— what it takes to make something need saving in the first place. She hopes the Taken War won’t be what teaches it to them. 

The Guardian takes a few of the day’s Wrath bounties, shuffles away towards Ives. Zaye knocks a hand against Lissa’s shoulder, takes an idle look at the screen beside her. The way she tilts her head to catch a glimpse reveals the crease of her bright eyes, what passes for a grin among the Guard and the Corsairs. 

“Prison’s trying out that new Colossus today. Variks might snatch that new Light up.” 

“They’ll manage,” she replies, because they always do. The Guardians seize and build, their strange Tower growing taller every time her emissaries report back. In the meantime, the Reef is managing in its own cold way: mourning, dreaming, whispering dozens of secret plans over and under one another. Cutthroat politics do little but make her want to be back in the field. 

Zaye hums what’s probably an assent, and Lissa returns to categorizing the Corsairs’ requests for field equipment. Petra watches the Outpost and she is not the only one that knows her own story, but until the other comes back she is content to wait. The Wrath and her station are settling back into cautious peace, waiting for dead Wolves and a dead King and a living Queen.


End file.
